CHAPTER 19
Hazel
I rushed down the stairs to the front door. Grant, as expected, popped out of his room, asking where I was going. What did it look like, genius?Out. The damn shadow. But we hadn’t spoken since the day before, and I wasn’t going to start now. I ignored him. He drew his line in the sand, showing that he stood on Zaid’s side, andnotmine. In the end, he knew where he stood. And I wasn’t going to take any shit.
He followed me. Out the front door. Through the lobby. Past the concierge. Into the elevator. Down the many floors to the ground. At the stoplight, I jammed the button to cross the street, and he stood next to me. Having rushed out after me, he had forgotten his sunglasses and was squinting. The stoplight changed. We crossed the street. Despite our differences in size, Grant had to pick up his pace to keep up with me.
He made his way towards Pretty Lush, but that wasn’t where I was going. To be honest, I didn’t knowwhereI was going; I was just going somewhere. I turned down the street and walked past the bar. To the little empty lots. Past the trendy bars. Going around groups of beautiful people smiling into selfies. I kept my head down and held up a constant middle finger. Fuck you, and fuck your perfect image too.
My phone buzzed. Christine texted:Where are you?We were supposed to meet for drinks right then, but I had canceled at the last minute. I didn’t bother answering. Another text came through immediately afterward:Seriously? You’re giving me nothing? Ghosting me, just like that?I should have responded, but with Grant beside me, I didn’t want to sit through another lecture. He’d go on about why I shouldn’t trust her, and I’d lash out, saying how obviously I couldn’t trust him either.
But it was a different kind of trust when it came to Grant. Obviously, I knew that Grant was never going to hurt me. Not like that. Not unless I wanted him to. And now, not even if Zaid ordered it. We were too… toosomethingfor him to be able to do that to me.
But when it came to his loyalty, he had chosen his side. And that hurt. A lot. Like a gun to my heart.
Palm trees reached up around a few sad-looking casinos, sandwiched between the renovated buildings catering to the new crowds. Bright and modern colors next to the dull paint. I could go into one of the casinos and pretend like I was going to lose my soul gambling, or at least a few thousand dollars, and make Grant second guess his decision to help me. But that didn’t sound appealing either. I had promised to never gamble again.
Finally, we came to a small park, one we hadn’t been to before. Really, it was a lot with turf and sail shades. A water fountain next to a soda machine. But no kids roamed the fake grass. No mothers with babies in strollers. In fact, the few people that were wandering about the small lot were hipsters with beards longer than their girlfriend’s sweaters. Grandma sweaters in the Las Vegas heat? I scoffed. What were they thinking? Even here, in a city with millions of people, I couldn’t figure out where I fit in. Not even with my damned yolked out roommate. My fuck buddy. My ex. My whatever.
I turned swiftly to him. He was shielding his eyes from the sun.
“I just want to feel like I belong somewhere,” I said. “Anywhere.” I lifted my hands and spun in a circle. Exasperation tingled through my fingertips, making me feel itchy. It didn’t matter where I was. What difference did it make if I was here in Vegas or back in that clinic in Arizona? If I was imprisoned in that cell, or dead, like Eric had wanted, I would still be the same. Lost. Abandoned. Rejected.
“Somewhere you belong,” Grant repeated.
“Yes, Grant,” I snapped. “I want a home.” But home wasn’t about a place. It was about the people you could be yourself with. And no matter how many times I tried, even when it felt like maybe Muscle Boy understood me, I always ended up right where I began. Alone.
I crossed my arms. “Anywhere,” I said. “I don’t care. A place where people actually want me there.”
Not like my sister who always acted like it she’d rather be out hiking. Not like Eric who only gave me a place to stay because I was a tool he could use. I couldn’t even pretend like Christine was my friend, when she freaked out over my first canceled meetup. I couldn’t pretend like Grant was home either.
“You wouldn’t understand,” I said.
He put a hand on my shoulder, firm and weighty. I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to pull away, or to lean into his touch, to beg him to hold me and tell me I would find a home. Somewhere. Someday. Even if it wasn’t with him. Anything. As long as he held me.
I wanted home to be him. Damn it all. With every fiber of my being,thatwas what I wanted.
“You know I found out about my parents during high school?” I asked. “Long before Heather did.” I stared at my shoes; weathered sandals on top of leprechaun green grass. “Uncle Walter thought that telling me that they left us in a garbage can would make me grateful. Like he was so damn great because he wasn’t an addict like they were. As if telling me the truth would make me any less of a shit kid.” I hadn’t been the easiest kid to raise, and it was the reason why our families always shuffled the two of us from house to house. Uncle Walter was the only one who was willing to give us a permanent home while we finished high school. But he was wrong about how I would react to the truth. It only made me revolt more. What do you have to lose when you find out that your parents never wanted you, not even as a baby? That your only guardian doesn’t seem to care about you either? “It made me feel worthless,” I said.
He squeezed my shoulder. “I can imagine,” he said. An uncharacteristic move to signify how he felt. Why not do his usual silence? Why speak now? I refused to believe him
“You don’t understand,” I said.
I crossed my arms and walked through the grass, watching my shadow disappear under the sail shades. The beards and sweaters scattered like crabs, so I sulked there. I had nowhere to go. I sunk down and sat on the hot plastic strands of grass.
After a few moments, Grant sat down next to me, his knees bent in front of him.
“My step-father wasn’t the only one,” he said. I stiffened, but hesitated before I did anything. Part of me wanted to tell him to shut up and leave me alone, and the other part of me didn’t want to make a big deal out of this. Grant hardly ever talked about himself, and certainly not about something so personal. But that didn’t change why I was mad. Still, I listened. “She always had a boyfriend. One asshole who tried to teach me to be a man by beating me. Another who crashed the only car we had. It always felt like she was choosing them over me.”
My heart sank.
“She didn’t know what she was doing,” he added. “Thought that being with them would give us a better life. Give me a role model.” He shook his head. “In a strange, messed up way, she was doing it for me. She thought she was doing the right thing.”
He said the words with such clarity that they rang in my mind, echoing back and forth. His brown eyes held me then, wishing I would see it from his view. Grant thought he was doing the right thing by helping me. By being there for Zaid. By providing for his mom. He could only do what he thought was right.
But it was the same for me. I was doing what I thought was right too.
He should have said what he meant: Yeah, I do know how you feel, Hazel. “I never felt like I had a home,” he said, “Until Zaid.”
